Texas to execute 300th inmate
Posted on 03/12/2003 8:42:21 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Texas to execute 300th inmate
03/12/2003
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - In the 22 years since convicted killer Delma Banks arrived on Texas death row, he's watched 299 prisoners be taken away for execution. Barring a U.S. Supreme Court reprieve, he'll be No. 300 Wednesday night.
"You're talking to men, one day they move them out and they don't return," Banks, 44, condemned for a fatal shooting near Texarkana, recently told the Houston Chronicle.
In spending more than half of his life awaiting lethal injection, Banks has been on death row longer than the 16-year-old victim in his case, Richard Wayne Whitehead, was alive.
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"I'm terribly upset it's gone on for this long period of time," says Larry Whitehead, whose son was gunned down and had his car stolen in 1980. "It's very frustrating and very hard on us and has been for the fact this keeps coming back up."
The 299th execution since Texas resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982 -- and 10th this year -- occurred Tuesday night when Bobby Glen Cook received lethal injection for killing Edwin Holder, 42, a fisherman who was robbed and shot in the head Feb. 6, 1993, while he slept along the Trinity River in Anderson County in East Texas.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals earlier this week refused to block Banks' execution and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles dismissed a petition for commutation and reprieve because it was filed too late.
"Texas is more concerned with compiling execution statistics than pursuing justice," said Rick Halperin, president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Texas accounts for more than one-third of the 835 executions in the United States since 1976, when the death penalty resumed under a Supreme Court ruling. No other state is even close. Virginia is second with 87.
"We are confident that the United States Supreme Court will intervene and prevent Mr. Banks' execution," said one of Banks' lawyers, George Kendall, whose appeal has drawn support of three former federal judges, including William Sessions, a former FBI director.
Banks' lawyers argued his trial attorney did a lousy job, prosecutors improperly disqualified blacks from his jury and two witnesses against Banks were shaky in a case where Banks should have been found innocent.
"Mr. Banks' case is fraught with the kind of unreliability that we know leads to wrongful convictions," said Kendall, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
In an accompanying brief to the high court, Sessions complained of "uncured constitutional errors in the process through which (Banks) was convicted and sentenced."
The 16-year-old Whitehead, from Wake Village, just west of Texarkana, knew Banks. Both worked together at a restaurant. The night of April 11, 1980, Banks ran into Whitehead and his girlfriend after a high school dance and asked for a ride home. Banks, then 21, bought some beer and the trio went to a park in nearby Nash.
They took the girl home about 11 p.m., then returned to the park, where Whitehead was shot in the head "for the hell of it," Banks said, according to testimony at his trial.
Evidence showed he drove Whitehead's car to Dallas where he dumped it, gave away the pistol and returned home by bus. The car never was found but the .25-caliber pistol was recovered and tied to the slaying. Whitehead's body was found two days later. Banks was arrested in Dallas, where he returned about 10 days later to get a gun so he and two other men could commit some robberies, he said at his trial.
"I have no doubt at all, none at all that he is the murderer," replied James Elliott, a prosecutor at Banks' 1980 trial. "I take absolute and full responsiblity for my part in this case in placing him on death row. That is exactly where he needs to be, in my opinion."
Elliott said Banks, a black man, was left with an all-white trial jury because blacks in the jury pool had to be excused for knowing Banks or his family, that Banks' trial lawyer was the former district attorney in the county and was competent to handle the case, and other witnesses tied Banks to the crime besides one who has submitted an affidavit for Banks' attorneys recanting his trial testimony.
"They want to do all this theatrical stuff but they don't want to talk about the facts of the case," Elliott said of the efforts to spare Banks.
Banks, who dropped out of school in the 11th grade, had no previous criminal record. His father testified at the trial that Banks was a "nice son" who had fallen in with "the wrong bunch."
Texas set for 300th execution since revival of death penalty
03/12/2003
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The U.S. Supreme Court, acting on appeals that raised questions about the legitimacy of his conviction, granted a last-minute reprieve Wednesday to keep condemned killer Delma Banks from becoming the 300th prisoner executed in Texas.
"I just thank the Lord," Banks said when informed by prison officials about 10 minutes before he could have been moved to the death chamber gurney. "Give Jesus all the credit."
Family members waiting outside the prison Wednesday night jumped joyously and hugged as word spread.
"I wish we could have brought it to a conclusion today," said James Elliott, a prosecutor who helped win Banks' conviction in 1980. "But I've been here 23 years and I'm prepared to stay here to see it through.
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Banks already had his last meal of two double-meat cheeseburgers and two orders of french fries when the stay came. "It was good," he said before officers returned him the nearly 50 miles east to the Polunsky Unit near Livingston, home of Texas death row.
With the reprieve, condemned murderer Keith Clay now becomes the potential No. 300 with his scheduled March 20 execution.
The court issued Banks' stay, without comment, for the 1980 murder of 16-year-old Richard Wayne Whitehead, a co-worker at a restaurant. Banks shot Whitehead "for the hell of it" after a night of drinking, according to a witness at Banks' trial.
The stay in Banks case will remain in effect until the high court decides whether to review his case. No justices noted objections to the reprieve.
Bank's attorney, George Kendall, drew support of three former federal judges, including William Sessions, a former FBI director, in his appeal.
Texas accounts for more than one-third of the 835 executions in the United States since 1976, when the death penalty resumed under a Supreme Court ruling. Virginia is second with 87.
Convicted murderer Bobby Glen Cook became No. 299 Tuesday night when he was put to death for killing and robbing an East Texas fisherman 10 years ago. It was the 10th execution this year in the state, which is on a pace to top the record 40 injections carried out in 2000.
In spending more than half of his life awaiting lethal injection, Banks was on death row longer than the 16-year-old victim in his case was alive.
"There is absolutely no doubt in our minds that he is guilty," Larry Whitehead, whose son was gunned down at a park near his Texarkana-area home and had his car stolen, said earlier this week. "All these articles about poor Delma, poor Delma and how much of a raw deal he got.
"Stopping a youngster's life at 16 years old is a raw deal."
The Whitehead family was in the prison to witness the execution when the reprieve was granted. They declined to comment.
Banks' lawyers argued his trial attorney did a poor job, prosecutors improperly disqualified blacks from his jury and testimony from two witnesses against Banks was shaky in a case where Banks should have been found innocent.
"Mr. Banks' case is fraught with the kind of unreliability that we know leads to wrongful convictions," said Kendall, an attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Sessions, in an accompanying brief to the high court, alleged "uncured constitutional errors in the process through which (Banks) was convicted and sentenced."
More than 20 state lawmakers, including Sen. Rodney Ellis, Sen. Jeff Wentworth and Reps. Sylvester Turner and Ron Wilson, had called on Wednesday for Gov. Rick Perry to give Banks a 30-day reprieve.
In two letters to Perry, the lawmakers pointed to problems during Banks' trial and a letter from a group of state representatives said there was perjured testimony in the case.
"We have a moral responsibility to ensure that the death penalty is assessed judiciously," the letter from a several state senators said. "The circumstances surrounding this situation cannot guarantee us a clear conscience."
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals earlier this week refused to block Banks' execution and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles dismissed a petition for commutation and reprieve because it was filed too late.
"Texas is more concerned with compiling execution statistics than pursuing justice," said Rick Halperin, president of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
The 16-year-old Whitehead, from Wake Village, just west of Texarkana, had worked with Banks at a restaurant. The night of April 11, 1980, Banks ran into Whitehead and his girlfriend after a high school dance and asked for a ride home. Banks, then 21, bought some beer and the trio went to a park in nearby Nash.
They took the girl home about 11 p.m., then returned to the park, where Whitehead was shot in the head "for the hell of it," Banks told a witness who testified at his trial.
Evidence showed he drove Whitehead's car to Dallas where he dumped it, gave away the pistol and returned home by bus. Whitehead's body was found two days later. Banks was arrested in Dallas, where he returned about 10 days later to get a gun so he and two other men could commit some robberies, he said at his trial.
The car never was found but Banks led police to the .25-caliber pistol tied to the slaying.
"I have no doubt at all, none at all that he is the murderer," replied Elliott. "I take absolute and full responsibility for my part in this case in placing him on death row. That is exactly where he needs to be, in my opinion."
Elliott said Banks, a black man, was left with an all-white trial jury because blacks in the jury pool had to be excused for knowing Banks or his family, that Banks' trial lawyer was a skilled former district attorney, and other witnesses tied Banks to the crime besides one who has submitted an affidavit for Banks' attorneys recanting his trial testimony.
"The fact of the matter is Delma led police to the murder weapon in Dallas," Elliott said. "Three independent witnesses at the house said that the car was there and Banks was there.
"They (appeals lawyers) want to do all this theatrical stuff but they don't want to talk about the facts of the case."
Banks, who dropped out of school in the 11th grade, had no previous criminal record. His father, testifying at the trial, called him a "nice son" who had fallen in with "the wrong bunch."
Full text on #30.
Supreme Court stays Banks' execution
03/12/2003
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - The U.S. Supreme Court, acting on appeals that raised questions about the legitimacy of his conviction, granted a last-minute reprieve Wednesday to keep condemned killer Delma Banks from becoming the 300th prisoner executed in Texas.
"I just thank the Lord," Banks said when informed by prison officials about 10 minutes before he could have been moved to the death chamber gurney. "Give Jesus all the credit."
Family members waiting outside the prison Wednesday night jumped joyously and hugged as word spread.
"I wish we could have brought it to a conclusion today," said James Elliott, a prosecutor who helped win Banks' conviction in 1980. "But I've been here 23 years and I'm prepared to stay here to see it through.
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Banks already had his last meal of two double-meat cheeseburgers and two orders of french fries when the stay came. "It was good," he said before officers returned him the nearly 50 miles east to the Polunsky Unit near Livingston, home of Texas death row.
With the reprieve, condemned murderer Keith Clay now becomes the potential No. 300 with his scheduled March 20 execution.
The court issued Banks' stay, without comment, for the 1980 murder of 16-year-old Richard Wayne Whitehead, a co-worker at a restaurant. Banks shot Whitehead "for the hell of it" after a night of drinking, according to a witness at Banks' trial.
| Date of scheduled execution | State | Victim name | Inmate name | Status |
| March 18, 2003 | Texas | Tom Varughese Robert Rios, 32 Maria Elda Isabell Rios, 10 Victor Roberto Rios, 11 |
Keith Clay | pending |
| A Houston jury deliberated 8 hours before deciding on the death sentence for Keith Bernard Clay, 28, in the murder of Melathethil Tom Varughese. Clay robbed the store in Baytown on Jan. 4, 1994, shot at Varughese 10 times, hitting him 6, then beat him with a pistol, said prosecutor Marie Munier. The jury also heard about an unrelated crime Clay alleged was involved in just a week before the robbery -- the Christmas Eve 1993 murders of a Baytown man and his 2 young children. Clay's co-defendant in that case, Shannon Thomas, is already on death row for those murders. At about 6:30 p.m. on Dec. 24, 1993, Jose Rios walked into his brother's Baytown home when no one answered his knock on the door. He and his mother, wife and children were visiting the brother's family, bearing Christmas gifts. "I opened the door and saw the Christmas tree with gifts," Rios said. "I opened the door a little more and saw my brother lying on the floor with blood on him." Rios found his brother shot to death on the floor, with a knife in his throat. He called 911, and his wife screamed from upstairs that the children, Maria Elda Isabell Rios, 10, and Victor Roberto Rios, 11, also were dead. Hours before, Thomas, 24, and Clay, 27, burst into the Rios home and bound Roberto Rios with duct tape before stabbing him and shooting him twice in the head. Then the two men went upstairs to the children's bedroom, made them lie face-down on the floor and shot each of them once in the back of the head. Police speculated at the time that that the killings were drug-related. Rios was a drug dealer who mostly sold marijuana. Thomas and Clay apparently had bought drugs from Rios and assumed he would have money in the house. The children probably were killed because they were potential witnesses, according to police. The children's mother was divorced from Rios and lived in Mexico at the time of the killing. The triple murder was unsolved for two years before authorities received a tip after the pair had bragged to friends about the murders. When Thomas and Clay gave statements to police, each admitted having been at the scene but each denied that he was the shooter. Prosecutor Munier said that Thomas did the shooting, but that Clay may have held the children down. In the convenience store robbery and murder, there was witness. Clay went in the store about 8:30 pm. looking more to kill than to rob, Munier said, adding that "it was a vicious, brutal murder, I think not so much for the money, but to prove that he was a killer to his friend." The jury agreed with the prosecution that Clay constituted a future threat to society, and, rejecting the defense's call for a life sentence, returned with a verdict of death. | ||||
Is it me, or is this not blasphemy of the highest order?
Is it just me, or does this seem ironic? We have an appeals process, as well we should. But this guy keeps getting his date with his maker delayed at the last minute. Doesn't that sound like a 'cruel and unusual punishment?' I mean, TWENTY-THREE years since he killed Richard Wayne Whitehead. And NOW this last minute stay. What an emotional roller-coaster that must be for Banks and his family? Seems like an expedited finish would have been more humane to me. But I guess this is the way the LIBS like it? . . .
. . .on Dec. 24, 1993, Jose Rios walked into his brother's Baytown home when no one answered his knock on the door. He and his mother, wife and children were visiting the brother's family, bearing Christmas gifts. "I opened the door and saw the Christmas tree with gifts," Rios said. "I opened the door a little more and saw my brother lying on the floor with blood on him." Rios found his brother shot to death on the floor, with a knife in his throat. He called 911, and his wife screamed from upstairs that the children, Maria Elda Isabell Rios, 10, and Victor Roberto Rios, 11, also were dead. Hours before, Thomas, 24, and Clay, 27, burst into the Rios home and bound Roberto Rios with duct tape before stabbing him and shooting him twice in the head. Then the two men went upstairs to the children's bedroom, made them lie face-down on the floor and shot each of them once in the back of the head. . .You know, every one of these Death Penalty cases that I read are HEINOUS and vicious murders performed by animals. How ANYONE could side with these animals is beyond me. I think that the LIBS that oppose the death penalty either DON'T read about the crimes or don't have a heart . . .
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